The key to success for female paraplanners is to ignore the need to “fit the mould”, according to Katie Burgess, senior paraplanner and financial planning executive at Crowe Financial Planning.
Burgess discussed how it was not uncommon for female paraplanners and advisers to be the only woman in the room sometimes but she thought this could be empowering.
“Often, female paraplanners will not have a female financial adviser figure to look to for guidance and inspiration, because they are underrepresented. It is easy to look at a male adviser and think ‘I don’t possess the same skills’ or ‘I wouldn’t be comfortable taking that approach’”.
“It is therefore important that women don’t feel the need to ‘fit the mould’ and are empowered to find the approach that works for them, to prove to the industry that there is space for females too,” she explained.
Burgess thought one of the reasons a small number of female paraplanners wanted to become advisers was because of the misconceptions around what skills were required to be an adviser, which is why many female paraplanners did not eventually work their way up to adviser.
She said: ‘Often paraplanners aspire to become financial advisers, but with paraplanning being a professional career in its own right, a lot of people also prefer to stay as career paraplanners.
“I do believe that there is a misconception around what skills are required to be an adviser. Many think that it is a sales driven role, as opposed to relationship building, and may not see themselves as a salesperson, particularly when paraplanning is such a different role to sales.”
Burgess said she found paraplanning “safe and comfortable” and liked the stability of the income and the consistency of the role.
“While I do aspire to become an adviser, the thought of working in a target driven role can be daunting, having never worked this way before,” she added.
Burgess believed it was important to encourage more females to progress as it could bring a new dynamic to the advice industry.
She explained: “Women typically act with a lot of empathy and understanding towards challenges that clients face, bringing a new dynamic to the relationship.
“It is also important that advisers reflect their client base and having more females in adviser roles enables this to happen.
“The impact of the gender wealth gap on women, which is caused by a number of factors including taking breaks for childcare and menopause. I feel female advisers could be more suited to dealing with any clients impacted and make a conscious effort to help their clients address and plan for such issues.”
Despite the gender gap, Burgess noted that one of the main challenges for a paraplanner wishing to progress to an advice role was that the roles were different.
